Coloradans didn’t need the report of a prestigious study group released last week to tell them their constitution has become a quagmire of competing mandates requiring both tax cuts and specific spending increases.

We learned that during the recent budget crisis.

Still, the report by the University of Denver’s Colorado Constitution Panel does document the warring sections of our state constitution in impressive detail. As such, it should give new impetus to reform efforts when lawmakers convene this week.

We’re less certain about the panel’s key recommendation, that the state adopt an amendment to the constitution to create a Constitutional Revision Commission that would draft future constitutional changes for the voters to consider.

It sounds almost comical — another amendment to the already cluttered constitution to create yet another panel to de-clutter the constitution. Whew.

Besides, that process could take a very long time to clean up the state’s basic governance document. In contrast, a plan by House Speaker Andrew Romanoff might bring needed reforms as early as 2009.

Romanoff’s plan has two stages. The first would ask voters for a one-time suspension of the constitution’s provision limiting amendments to a single subject. That way, voters could then consider a multi-part solution to the conflicting amendments at a later election. If this was approved in 2008, the substantive amendment could be voted on in 2009.

The 2009 election would be a good time to resolve our constitutional conflicts because the five-year timeout from the revenue limits of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights expires July 1, 2010. And 2010 is also the last year Amendment 23 will require a 1 percent increase in K-12 public school funding, though other provisions requiring funding increases for student growth and inflation will continue indefinitely.

TABOR, passed in 1992, and Amendment 23, passed in 2000, were two of the unholy trio of conflicting mandates that triggered the budget crisis. The third key element, the so-called Gallagher Amendment, passed in 1982.

Passed in three separate elections, the three mandates ultimately reacted to produce a host of unintended consequences. The Gallagher amendment stipulated that business would forever pay 55 percent of the property taxes in Colorado while residential property paid 45 percent. That measure has today produced a business property tax that is about three times as high as the residential tax on property of equal value. After TABOR’s passage, it also had the unexpected effect of reducing local school revenue, forcing the state to make up the difference.

When Amendment 23 was approved in 2000, state revenue, already limited by TABOR, also had to fund further hikes in local school budgets. During the budget crisis, these warring mandates could be met only by savagely cutting higher education, the only big budget area not protected by its own spending mandates.

One variant of the Romanoff plan, proposed by Sen. Steve Johnson, R-Fort Collins, would have the legislature draft the proposed solution and refer it to the voters in 2008 along with the provision suspending the single-subject rule. If the voters approved suspending the single-subject rule, they’d still have to vote on the proposed solution in 2009 — but at least they would know in 2008 exactly what the terms of that proposed budget fix would be.

Ideally, that would defuse fears of “buying a pig in a poke.”

It’s a solid idea, especially if Johnson can win over Republicans, since any recommendation needs support from two-thirds of each house.

Lawmakers must craft a fair, bipartisan solution to our conflicting budget mandates in time for voters to consider it in 2008 and give it final approval in 2009.